Okay, tl;dr:
- Emo Dwarves! \o/
Urist McLaborer cancels Toil: These wounds they will not heal...- Dwarves' job designations have gotten much better.
- Holy Cornucopia, Batman! What is a "purple amaranth"? Also, how I farm for persimmon?
- History Mode offers a lot of interesting tales. Apparently, historical fortresses can now set Forgotten beasts loose on the surface?
There's also records of some foolish mortal willingly aiding a demon in overtaking his civ, and demons raising Slade spires from Hell to the surface?
Plus, I found the tragic story of some poor sap who was abducted from his family three different times, escaping on the first two. Curiously, the abductors seemed to be humans.
Other interesting tidbits include named constructions like bridges and mead halls, and civs getting into petty squabbles over farmland and whatnot.
- Wagons and caravans are still hilariously broken (at least in 0.40.05): a human caravan piled up its own wagon train into my depot, mangling a human bowman in the process, and never left.
A pair of dwarven caravans deconstructed their wagons outside the fortress and high-tailed out of there for no apparent reason.
(Maybe they saw some dead bodies and panicked?)
- Trees sure like collapsing a lot, quite often pulping a limb or two from the unfortunate lumberjack involved.